~ Acquired Brain Injury (ABI): from the acute hospital to early rehabilitation – more on: www.CaringforPadraig.org and www.ansaol.ie

Licht aus – Spot an!

If you’re not German you won’t ever have heard of Ilja Richter. And if you are German and under 50 you also probably won’t ever have heard of Ilja and his legendary introduction to the acts he presented on his weekly Disco show on German TV in the 70s and early 80s. “Schönen guten Abend, meine Damen und Herren. Hallo Freunde!” followed by “Licht aus – Spot an”, lights off – spot light on!

You couldn’t make it up. Neither Ilja, nor his show. They were both, quite unbelievable. Watching them now, they were pretty brilliant, in a kinda funny way.

Someone mentioned the intro today saying that it really encapsulates many important aspects of what one should do at certain times: filtering everything out, getting rid of all the noise surrounding us, and putting the spot light on what is the important act of the evening – in short, not getting lost in a sea of details, not being distracted left right and centre by side-stories, but to focus on the one thing that makes or will make the difference.

What is the one, the most important thing today for you? What is it for me? What is it for us collectively?

Today, the therapy centre had invited me to attend a one-day training session on eye problems following a trauma or other neurological problem or illness. It has been some time since I’d been in such a learning environment and found it excellent.

It made me think that there are physios, OTs, SLTs, and MTs – but no-one who would explore the different senses: taste, touch, or smells. And while there are eye-tests, there doesn’t seem to be much of an emphasis on doing anything with the results. There is something called ‘eye training”, but there don’t seem to be any trainers or therapists available for it.